PITTSBURGH – Stuck in the middle of the Oakland community and the city of Pittsburgh, the University of Pittsburgh has found itself with a major problem when it wants to expand. There’s little room to go but up.Once a private university, Pitt became a public university supported by Pennsylvania tax dollars in 1966. Upon becoming a public institution, it was given a state mandate to triple its size and its enrollment. The General State Authority decided to expedite the expansion in 1967 through the use of eminent domain, a decision harming the relationship between Pitt and the Oakland community for many years.In fact, the fighting and distrust between the community and the university became so bad that students organized local residents into a group opposing the university.”There was a group of graduate students that were upset with the ways of the university and the commonwealth and they formed an organization called People’s Oakland,” said Jay Roling, Pitt director of local relations. “Their main purpose was to fight the university on all fronts.”Under the leadership of the students, People’s Oakland became well organized and adept at fighting the university. It forced Pitt to abandon plans for a key two-block area in return for an end to community resistance on the demolition of Forbes Field, the old Pittsburgh Pirates baseball stadium.Former Pitt Chancellor Wesley Posvar explained the agreement to the University Times, a Pitt publication.”When we agreed to re-site the quadrangle and the law school it was really out of deference to the community’s wishes. The community began to see that we were willing to work in everybody’s behalf for mutual benefit,” Posvar said.After settling with the community groups the university faced a new battle with the city and state governments. Gov. Thomas J. Ridge essentially halted all planned construction for the University of Pittsburgh and told the university to make peace with the community before it asked the government to allow construction to reconvene.”(At that time) there was distrust and paranoia from everybody,” Roling said.The university established the Office of Community Affairs to communicate with the university’s neighbors in the Oakland community. Roling admits that there was no sense of togetherness between the university and the Oakland community and that as long as this continued, there would be no moving forward. “I think the secret is that you have to have a department, a commitment, starting at the top, starting with the trustees and the president. They say stuff flows downhill. If you have that kind of commitment, then it flows down into the departments,” Roling said.Recently, Pitt’s largest concern in acquiring off-campus area has been to improve student housing by driving out absentee landlords and offering students better housing rather than expanding the university.According to Roling, through dialogue with the Oakland community, the university’s neighbors realized the university did not want to relocate them and expand its borders into the community. When it saw the university was attempting to rid the area of absentee landlords, more trust began to develop.”The reason I think we are successful is that the people are talking,” Roling said. “In the course of the years, this university, unlike a lot of them, we made our peace. We conceded some points. We certainly changed our expansion plan.”As for problems other universities face, Roling feels that distrust of the university and its plans for expansion could be easily fixed.”After they (other universities) got their buildings and they got what they needed, they dropped the whole thing (communication). I’ve gone around to some of the places, and usually where they didn’t keep the commitment up, there’s a lot of distrust.”A distrust that the University of Pittsburgh and the Oakland community has slowly learned to change.